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A review by gapagrin
Divergent by Veronica Roth
3.0
I'm not generally a fan of the whole dystopian genre. I suppose I just prefer to read books that take place somewhere I'd actually want to go, like Hogwarts. This book didn't feel truly dystopian to me - yes, it takes place in the future after some sort of awful event forced everyone to live in a rundown version of Chicago, but it didn't feel that bad to me. Most people had reasonably decent standards of living, except maybe the factionless.
The society is divided into five factions, each of which favours a particular personality trait (Dauntless = bravery, Candor = honesty, Abnegation = selflessness, Amity = happiness, and Erudite = intelligence and knowledge). You take an aptitude test that tells you which faction you're best suited for and then, technically, you can choose any one that you want (keeping in mind that you never ever get to change your mind or go back to your old faction if you choose to leave it and if you fail any of the entrance tests to your faction of choice you're booted out and you become factionless, living on the streets.
My first question is: who decided this was a good idea? What purpose do the factions serve? They sort people into neat categories that don't actually really work because everyone kind of needs everything and that's about it. There doesn't seem to be any point to them. Someone somewhere just decided hey, let's divide everyone into groups based on personality and...keep doing exactly what we were doing before, just with cool names. The only thing the factions really seem to do well is make it clear what of those five traits you value most. That and give readers plenty of online quizzes to take (which faction do you belong to?).
That being said, I did really enjoy this book. It's fast-paced and I actually cared about the main character, Tris. Every time I started wondering what the point of something was, I still found that I wanted to find out what happened next. I really liked that Tris' entire frame of reference comes from Abnegation, the selfless faction she was raised in. Even as she gets less Abnegation and more Dauntless, she still views everything through that selfless/selfish lens. You can see her friend Christina interpret everything through the Candor lens of honest/lie. As pointless as the factions are, they are a culture that molds you and affects you for life.
I was disappointed with the Erudite - they're the main villains and don't seem to have any real reason to be. What would they do with power if they got it? They don't seem to have any kind of plan other than 'take power'. If they'd had some sort of plan, or proof that other factions were detrimental to society, it wouldn't have seemed as much like they were just evil, wanting power for the sake of it, no matter the cost. Other characters, including Tris, have shown Erudite capability, so the the message here is that it's not that intelligent that are evil - it's people that choose to value intelligence over other qualities.
The society is divided into five factions, each of which favours a particular personality trait (Dauntless = bravery, Candor = honesty, Abnegation = selflessness, Amity = happiness, and Erudite = intelligence and knowledge). You take an aptitude test that tells you which faction you're best suited for and then, technically, you can choose any one that you want (keeping in mind that you never ever get to change your mind or go back to your old faction if you choose to leave it and if you fail any of the entrance tests to your faction of choice you're booted out and you become factionless, living on the streets.
My first question is: who decided this was a good idea? What purpose do the factions serve? They sort people into neat categories that don't actually really work because everyone kind of needs everything and that's about it. There doesn't seem to be any point to them. Someone somewhere just decided hey, let's divide everyone into groups based on personality and...keep doing exactly what we were doing before, just with cool names. The only thing the factions really seem to do well is make it clear what of those five traits you value most. That and give readers plenty of online quizzes to take (which faction do you belong to?).
That being said, I did really enjoy this book. It's fast-paced and I actually cared about the main character, Tris. Every time I started wondering what the point of something was, I still found that I wanted to find out what happened next. I really liked that Tris' entire frame of reference comes from Abnegation, the selfless faction she was raised in. Even as she gets less Abnegation and more Dauntless, she still views everything through that selfless/selfish lens. You can see her friend Christina interpret everything through the Candor lens of honest/lie. As pointless as the factions are, they are a culture that molds you and affects you for life.
I was disappointed with the Erudite - they're the main villains and don't seem to have any real reason to be. What would they do with power if they got it? They don't seem to have any kind of plan other than 'take power'. If they'd had some sort of plan, or proof that other factions were detrimental to society, it wouldn't have seemed as much like they were just evil, wanting power for the sake of it, no matter the cost. Other characters, including Tris, have shown Erudite capability, so the the message here is that it's not that intelligent that are evil - it's people that choose to value intelligence over other qualities.